New Mexico Territory
The New Mexixo Territory which included the areas which became the modern U.S. states of New Mexico and Arizona as well as the southern part of present-day Nevada, played a small but significant role in the Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War. Despite its remoteness from the major battlefields of the east and its existence on the still sparsely populated and largely undeveloped American frontier, both Confederate and Union governments claimed ownership over the territory, and several important battles and military operations took place in the region. In 1861, the Confederacy claimed the southern half of the vast New Mexico Territory as its own Arizona Territory and waged the ambitious New Mexico Campaign in an attempt to control the American Southwest and open up access to Union-held California. Confederate power in the New Mexico Territory was effectively broken when the campaign culminated in the Union victory at the Battle of Glorieta Pass in 1862. However, the territorial government continued to operate out of Texas, and Confederate troops marched under the Arizona flag until the end of the war. Additionally, over 7,000 troops from the New Mexico Territory served the Union. ''History 'Prior to the War' The New Mexico Territory was organized as a U.S. territory in 1850, and for many years its precise boundaries and internal administration remained undefined. In 1853, the territory was expanded south of the Gila River in the Gadsden Purchase. Proposals for a division of the territory and the organization of a separate Territory of Arizona were advanced as early as 1856. The first proposals for a separate Arizona Territory were not based on the modern east–west division but rather a north–south division. These proposals arose from concerns about the effectiveness of the territorial government in Santa Fe to administer the newly acquired southern portions of the territory. The first proposal dates to a conference held in Tucson that convened on August 29, 1856. The conference issued a petition requesting organization of the territory and signed by 256 people to the U.S. Congress, and elected Nathan P. Cooke as the territorial delegate to Congress. In January 1857, a bill for the organization of the territory was introduced into the United States House of Representatives, but the proposal was defeated on the grounds that the population of the proposed territory was yet too small. Later, a similar proposal was defeated in the Senate. The proposal for creation of the territory was controversial in part because of the perception that the New Mexico Territory was under the influence of southern sympathizers who sought to expand slavery into the Southwest. In February 1858, the New Mexico territorial legislature adopted a resolution in favor of the creation of the Arizona Territory, but with a north–south border along the 109th meridian, with the additional stipulation that all the Indians of New Mexico would be removed to northern Arizona. In April 1860, impatient for Congress to act, a convention of thirty-one delegates met in Tucson and adopted a constitution for a provisional territorial government of the area south of 34 degrees north. The delegates elected Dr. Lewis S. Owings as provisional governor. However, due to the small number of inhabitants in the proposed territory, the U.S. Congress continued to refuse to recognize any proceedings from any of the conventions being held in the area. Making matters worse, on March 2, 1861, the U.S. government formally revoked a contract with the Butterfield Overland Stagecoach Company which was being used to support delivery of United States mail on the overland route which ran from San Antonio through El Paso, Texas, and on to Mesilla, Tucson and California. The loss of this key communications link with the rest of the United States angered settlers in the Arizona region, just as many states in the Deep South were seceding from the Union.4 'American Civil War' 'New Mexican Campaign' As the route to California, New Mexico Territory was disputed territory during the American Civil War. Settlers in the southern part of the Territory willingly joined the Confederate States in 1861 as the newly organized Confederate Territory of Arizona, with a representative delegate to the Confederate Congress in the capital of Richmond. This territory consisted of the southern half of the earlier Federal New Mexico Territory of 1851 and was in contrast to the later Federal Arizona Territory established by the Union in 1863, which was the western half split off from the original U.S. New Mexico Territory. The short-lived Confederate Arizona Territory was the first American territorial entity to be called "Arizona". The Battle of Glorieta Pass in May 1862, following the retreat of Texan Confederate forces back south to El Paso, placed the area of the Rio Grande valley and eastern New Mexico Territory with the capital of Santa Fe under the control of the Federals with their Union Army. However, the government and leadership of Confederate Arizona persisted until the end of the Civil War in June 1865 with the surrender of the Trans-Mississippi Department, living in exile in El Paso, Texas with its delegate still in Richmond. 'Further Skirmishes' Federal troops left Arizona early in 1861 to reinforce operations in the east, the territory had been left open to Apache attack. Most notably, Mangas Coloradas and Cochise led a series of raids on white civilians that left dozens dead and spread fear and terror across the territory. The Apache appeared to show equal hostility to both Union and Confederate forces, and both armies attempted to control them; the resulting engagements are often considered part of both the Civil War and the American Indian Wars. The remaining Union troops in the New Mexico Territory were concentrated in forts along and near the Rio Grande; the commander of the Union Department of New Mexico, Colonel Edward R.S. Canby, started raising regiments of New Mexico volunteers and militia to replace the regular army units which had been ordered east. Captain Sherod Hunter, at the head of the Confederate Arizona Rangers, occupied southern Arizona during the spring of 1862. He bore orders from Governor Baylor to lure the Apache into Tucson for peace talks and then to exterminate the adults. Hunter's frontiersmen spent most of their time expelling Union supporters and skirmishing with Federal troops, so the order was never enforced. A detachment of Hunter's force traveled along the Butterfield Overland Mail route and destroyed caches of hay to prevent their use by Union forces; it traveled to within eighty miles of Fort Yuma. In April 1862, a small party of Confederates moving northwest from Tucson met a Union cavalry patrol near Stanwix Station. The skirmish that followed, in which one Union cavalryman was wounded, is often considered the westernmost engagement of the Civil War. Ultimately, the goal of expanding Confederate influence into southern California and to the Pacific Ocean was never realized. Following the Battle of Picacho Pass at Picacho Peak, about 50 miles (80 km) northwest of Tucson, the lead detachment of Colonel James H. Carleton's California Column drove the Confederates out of Tucson and advanced on Mesilla, the capital of Confederate Arizona. By July the Confederates had retreated to Texas, where they continued to manage the territorial government from El Paso. Carleton's troops later fought the Battle of Apache Pass, during which they were ambushed by Apache warriors led by Cochise and Mangas Coloradas in Arizona's Chiricahua Mountains. Even though the column withstood the Apache attack and subsequently established Fort Bowie to secure the pass, the Californians and the Apache would continue fighting throughout the war and beyond. The Confederate Arizona Territory, which split off from the rest of the New Mexico Territory in 1861, was the first U.S. incarnation of Arizona, which would come into existence as Arizona Territory in 1863. Confederate Arizona was created by capturing the southern tier of the Union's New Mexico Territory, while the boundary established in 1863 created an Arizona on the west separated from New Mexico on the east. 'Western Campaign 1867-1869'''